Overall Outlook: This year marks the fourth year for the Nationals at Nats Park and the 7th for the team in DC. The team still has not finished over .500 since their move and has been in the bottom 3 of NL attendance the past 4 years. The Nationals new era began on June 8, 2010 as Stephen Strasburg debuted to a record MASN audience with 14 K’s and a sellout crowd. The Nationals took a ride on the Strasburg express for a 7 home games until it was announced he would have Tommy John surgery and miss all of this upcoming season. I’ve mentioned in this space before that it always best to have your best player be a position player as the Nats sold only about 100,000 extra tickets to Strasburg starts last year. If he had been a position player the numbers would have been smaller per game but larger over the season. The Nationals have already started counting the days until Bryce Harper’s debut. As for 2011 per their press release “the team will lower or maintain the same price structure from 2010 for all regular season tickets while decreasing the cost of tickets in the premium seating areas” Plus, they’ve added a 15 game “manager’s plan” to their mini-packages. The Nats, like the A’s, hit the holiday lottery this year. They should do better this year for Interleague with the Mariners (Ichiro!) as well. I think that their honeymoon effect will wear off this year for the new ballpark and they are the least talented team in their division on paper. I’d expect a dropoff in attendance this year of around 10% to about 1.65 million fans in the nation’s capital.

David Simmons is a graduate of the University of Central Florida who worked in the front office of the Los Angeles Dodgers over 4 seasons. He has a decade of ticketing experience and currently resides in Baltimore. You can follow David on Twitter @davidesimmons